


Teenage Wasteland

by embroiderama



Series: Ben 'Verse [3]
Category: White Collar
Genre: Angsty Schmoop, Future Fic, Gen, Parenthood, Teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-09
Updated: 2013-08-09
Packaged: 2017-12-22 22:19:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/918688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/embroiderama/pseuds/embroiderama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ben asserts his independence, makes a mistake and scares the hell out of Neal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Teenage Wasteland

**Author's Note:**

> This is a timestamp set about ten years after [Love Can Tell a Million Stories](http://embroiderama.livejournal.com/538624.html) and won't make a great deal of sense without reading that one first but the main thing to know is that Neal has a son named Ben. Thank you to [](http://sinfulslasher.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://sinfulslasher.livejournal.com/)**sinfulslasher** for requesting this in my timestamp meme--it was supposed to be a tiny ficlet, but it just kept growing. Title from The Who (thanks, lola!).

Neal paced back and forth in the apartment in Brooklyn where he was waiting for Ben to come home. He had called Peter just to make sure that Ben hadn’t decided to show up at their house, but he wasn’t there either.

“You want me to call somebody in the PD? Get them to put out a BOLO?”

“No. At least not yet.” Ben had pulled the oldest trick in the book—saying he was going to a friend’s place to spend the night and going out instead. He was supposed to have been working on a project with his friend Jeremy and then riding to school with him in the morning, but the truth came out when Neal called to check on how they were doing. Now it was after 7 a.m. and Neal had no idea where Ben and his girlfriend Olivia were. Both of them had the GPS turned off on their phones, calls were going unanswered, and if Ben was crashed out asleep somewhere perfectly safe that Neal hadn’t thought to call Neal was going to kill him. And if he wasn’t safe, Neal had no idea what he was going to do.

The idea of putting a BOLO out on Ben and Olivia was tempting, but even after all these years Neal didn’t have the same level of trust in law enforcement that Peter did. He didn’t want to take the chance that some overzealous cop would decide a couple of idiot kids like Ben and Olivia were a threat; he didn’t want the kids scared or worse. Neal just didn’t know how to deal with this new, seventeen year-old Ben who was sullen one moment, rebellious the next. He thought he understood what was going on, but that didn’t make communicating with Ben any easier.

Hannah had passed away suddenly—well, as suddenly as a 95 year-old woman could—and Neal had been sad to lose her from his and Ben’s life but he knew that she’d been ready, that it had been her time. For Ben, his great-grandmother’s death had ripped the scab off of the grief from his mother’s death, and he was dealing with it all over again except as a young man instead of a little boy. This Ben didn’t want to cry in Neal’s arms or lose himself in playing video games; he just wanted to be alone or with Olivia, and Neal wasn’t any too sure he liked her.

Olivia’s parents were significantly less concerned about where the kids might be, but Neal had been out on his own in the world when he was seventeen, and he didn’t like to think of Ben being in that position, even for the night. Neal sat down on the couch and ran his hands through his hair. He’d been up all night and aside from scared the thing he felt most was _old_. When his phone rang with an unfamiliar number, Neal hurried to answer it. “Ben?”

“Um, Mr. Caffrey?”

Neal blinked hard and then realized who he was talking to. “Olivia? Where are you?”

“Um, Ben’s okay? But they need your, um, insurance?”

Neal’s heart jerked in his chest, and his throat went dry. “Where. Are. You?” Neal barely recognized his own voice, the angry authority in it.

“Um, Lennox Hill?”

“Stay where you are. I’m on my way. And Olivia?”

“Yeah?”

“Call your parents.” Neal hung up and immediately called the hospital as he grabbed his wallet and jacket and headed out the door. “My name is Neal Caffrey. I believe my son Ben Goldbaum is there.”

By the time he hung up the phone, Neal was almost to the subway station. He’d rather take a cab, but that time of day traffic would be slow, and he thought he might have a stroke sitting in a gridlock on the bridge. The subway would be crowded but much faster. As he started pounding down the stairs to the station, he called Peter. “He’s at Lennox Hill, and he’s going to be okay if I don’t kill him myself. I’ll talk to you later.”

Neal shoved himself onto the first train that came, raced through the station where he had to transfer and then wedged himself into another full subway car, and by the time he hurried into the emergency room he wanted to shake Ben and shout at him, even though he’d never been that kind of father, not for the past ten years Ben had been in his life. Neal barely glanced at Olivia where she sat in the waiting room. He forced himself to scrape up a little bit of charm to use on the woman behind the front desk, and his anger built back up as he followed her back to where Ben was waiting, but that feeling fizzled when he walked through the curtain to see Ben looking absolutely miserable with a thin hospital gown on over his black jeans.

Neal wrapped his arms around Ben and squeezed hard then let go and backed up to look Ben over. His face was pale, washed out, but he wasn’t attached to anything. Neal took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Explain to me exactly what happened.”

Ben frowned and looked down. “There was an all ages show for Automatic Groundhog, and I didn’t think you would be okay with me going.”

“Well, I don’t know all the details so maybe, maybe not. But that’s not what I’m really asking you about.”

“We just wanted to have fun!” Ben sounded like a deep-voiced, pouting four year-old. “And we couldn’t buy alcohol, and there was this guy who knows a girl Olivia kind of knows, and he had these pills, but it wasn’t really drugs. It wasn’t illegal!”

Neal closed his eyes and took another deep breath before looking at Ben again. “You’re smarter than that. You know there’s no such thing as ‘not really drugs.’ Right?”

Ben shrugged one shoulder and looked down.

“So, was it fun?”

“No. It made me feel weird, and I threw up on my shirt, and I sort of almost fell on Olivia but then this huge guy from the door totally over-reacted and made me go in an ambulance. We didn’t even get to see the band.”

“Totally over-reacted? To the prospect of having a minor collapse in their establishment from _maybe_ legal, maybe illegal drugs? I think they did exactly the right thing.”

Ben’s shoulders slumped further down but he didn’t respond.

"I'm curious what time this happened and why I didn't find out until this morning."

"It was, I dunno, 2:30 maybe. And then they had me waiting around forever because I was mostly fine, and there were people who were like, _bleeding_ and stuff."

"They still should have called me right away."

"Don't get mad," Ben said, looking sheepish, and Neal had a feeling he knew what had happened.

"You lied about your age?"

"I sort of told them I was eighteen, because I was hoping you wouldn't have to find out. But then they had to have insurance even though I didn't want to come here in the first place, and I had to show them my ID, too."

Neal sighed. “Yeah, that the way it works. So how do you feel now?”

“Kinda tired.”

“Yeah, me too. I was up all night after I found out you weren’t at Jeremy’s house.”

Ben winced. “Sorry, Dad.”

“You feel okay otherwise?”

“Yeah. The doctor said I could go home once you signed stuff.”

“Okay. I’m going to go find somebody. _Stay here._ ”

“Yes, Dad.” Ben’s sullen voice didn’t do anything for Neal’s simmering anger, but he let it go.

Neal couldn’t get anybody’s attention right away so he went back out to the waiting room and found Olivia still waiting, asleep in a chair and wearing an outfit that definitely wouldn’t have been allowed at school. “Olivia?” Neal touched her shoulder, and she woke up, eyes wide and looking even wider with a thick line of purple eyeliner smudged around them. “Did you call your parents.”

“Yeah, um, they said I could wait to come home until the doctor lets Ben go.”

“Okay. Will you do me a favor?” At Olivia’s nod, Neal pulled some cash out of his wallet. “Go to the hospital gift shop and buy Ben a t-shirt then come straight back here. I’ll tell them to let you come back where Ben is. Okay?”

“Okay.” She hopped up and took the card, and Neal watched her follow the signs out toward the gift shop.

After that, it didn’t take long to talk to Ben’s doctor and fill out the paperwork to get him discharged. Olivia showed up with a t-shirt that was black with the Statue of Liberty on it, and Ben changed, looking embarrassed. As they were walking back out through the waiting room Ben broke his silence. “Dad? Can we give Olivia a ride home?”

Neal nodded, distantly glad that Ben was thinking about her safety. “I was already planning on that.”

“You don’t have to,” she said quietly.

“Yes, I do. I want to make sure you’re home safe, too.” Neal looked back and forth between them, and he wasn’t sure which kid looked more pathetic. “Have either of you had anything to eat?”

They both shook their heads.

“Do you think you could eat something without getting sick in the cab?”

They both nodded so Neal walked a few yards down the block and bought three bagels with cream cheese before hailing a cab. The ride back to Brooklyn was quiet, both teenagers slowly eating their breakfasts and holding hands at the same time. When they stopped in front of Olivia’s place, she gave Neal a smile that he thought was supposed to win him over. “Thanks, Mr. Caffrey. You’re a really nice dad.”

“You’re welcome. Just keep that in mind when Ben tells you that he’s grounded for two weeks so you won’t see each other outside of school.”

Olivia’s mouth dropped open in shock, and Ben said, “No way!” but Neal just motioned for the cab driver to pull away from the curb.

“That sucks,” Ben complained.

“A lot of things suck. You lied to me and you took a dumb, pointless risk, and I’m not sure you even understand how dumb it was.”

Ben just sighed and leaned his head against the window for the few minutes remaining in their ride home. Inside the apartment, Ben stood in the middle of the living room looking like he didn't know what he should do.

"Go get some rest. We’re going to talk more later, okay?"

Ben made a mutinous face. "What are you going to do, tell me how disappointed Mom and Nana would be?”

Neal rubbed a hand over his face; he was too tired to handle all of the emotional minefields. “I’m not going to use your feelings about them to make you feel guilty. You should know I wouldn’t do that.”

Ben nodded sullenly. “What would _your_ mom have done if you did something like this?”

Ben was aware that Neal’s father hadn’t been around, and he knew what he needed to know about Neal’s criminal past. However, Neal didn’t volunteer information about his childhood, and Ben rarely asked. “Come here.” Neal put his hand on Ben’s shoulder and directed him over to the couch then sat down himself. “I never told you this because I didn’t want you to think it was okay, but I left home when I was your age. Almost eighteen, but still seventeen. And as far as I know, my mother never tried to find me.” Neal wished that the old sting of that had faded away, but it hadn’t. “So I don’t think that what my mother would have done is really pertinent.”

Ben looked over at Neal, surprised out of his mood for a moment. “Where did you go?”

“Here, eventually.”

“Was it fun?”

“Sometimes. And sometimes it was pretty bad. But you need to know that I’ll always come find you, and if I can’t find you myself then Peter or Mozzie will help me, and I don’t think there’s much of anywhere you could go that at least one of the three of us couldn’t find you eventually.” Neal held his hand up. “And that’s not meant as a challenge or a threat, it’s just a fact like the fact that I love you and I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”

“Sorry, Dad.”

Neal reached up and squeezed Ben’s shoulder. “I know. Now go get some sleep. We’ll talk more when we’re both not so tired.”

Ben nodded and sloped off to his room, and Neal sank back into the couch cushions. He pulled out his phone to call Peter, who greeted him with, “Is he okay?”

“He’s fine. I think I might have had a heart attack or some other kind of calamitous medical event, but he’s fine.”

Peter laughed, not unkindly, and Neal let himself relax. At least for the morning, everything was going to be okay.


End file.
